Typos creating havoc?
I just read this article http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,412823,00.html
where a recipe misprint by a magazine actually poisoned several people!! (Let's not mention who would actually have the patience to finely grate 20 nutmeg nuts....)
Have you ever cooked/baked something according to a recipe, only to figure out that it was incorrect? Or, (I do this all the time!!) have you ever not read the recipe correctly and ended up with a disaster?? In light of Labor Day weekend, let's hear disaster stories!!!
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11 Comments:
Yes, several recipes. We were a bit upset because a couple of dishes each took hours to prep and make, and some others were $ flush.
A Greek soup (forgot what it is called) was too lemony. We've had it at Greek restaurants, and it wasn't THAT lemony. Got pitched.
Etouffe recipe was extremely lemony (again!) and bland. We flushed about 2-3 lb of crawfish and 4 lobster tails for this disaster.
Pho soup base. The cardamom ruined it. Husband tossed it in the sink after 4, maybe 5 hours of working on it. It made my tongue go numb (not sure why), and got feeling back after 15-20 minutes.
Cassaendra at 11:23AM on 08/29/08
I am not naming names. But I am a collector of recipes. Some blog people make a lot of typos. They also leave out ingredients (whole other rant)
Now I am seasoned enough to know when something is missing that will fail a recipe. Many times I email a blogger. "Hey you forgot (example) any kind of leavening...this will never rise as is..." Response..."Oh I just forgot to type it" I think everyone ought to do their blogs in Word and then recheck twice before they hit the send button.
Amazingly most of your popular Cookbook authors have webpages with the corrections to books already published. Barefoot Contessa, Rose Levy Beranbaum, a host of others. Oops we are sorry the recipe overflowed your not from Williams Sonoma half sheet pan and made you clean brownies off your oven floor for 2 days.
JerzeeTomato at 1:45PM on 08/29/08
I have an old printout of an AB recipe for biscuits that calls for 4 tablespoons of baking powder instead of 4 teaspoons. I made the recipe once, realized the things tasted more like salt licks than biscuits, and went back and read the transcript of the show instead. Sure enough, a misprint. Thankfully, FN has since corrected the recipe on their site.
As far as mis-reading recipes, though... Let's just say there's a reason I usually read a recipe through three or four times before starting. Absentminded Jeni is... what was I saying, again?
jenilowrance at 2:32PM on 08/29/08
Yes I have this happen before. It is not the savory dishes so much that both me cause I read the recipe before I start (to prep) and I see something not right like 'too much of" or "too little of" at least I can wing it. It is the bakery recipes that just make me go over the edge, because one little thing wrong can screw the whole thing up. Another thing that pisss me off is when someone is going to give you an old family recipe, or some guarded recipe and they omit things on purpose.
pjracz10 at 2:45PM on 08/29/08
This is one reason I use recipes for inspiration rather than making them exactly as the recipe calls for. When I'm making something new, I might follow a recipe exactly, but even then, I'm likely to look up several similar recipes before I choose the one I want to make. Then, if one of them calls for 3 tablespoons of salt and the rest call for 1/3 teaspoon, I have a clue that there's a problem.
With spices and flavorings, there are always issues with the strength of a particular spice. If someone writes a recipe based on using stale spices, it's going to have a different result than if I use fresher ingredients. For example, my SIL used to make a potato salad recipe that was almost orange in color. When asked what she put it to make it that color, she explained that it was paprika. But you couldn't taste it. The stuff she had was so old that all it added was color, and maybe a slight change in flavor. Making the same recipe with fresh paprika would have been completely different.
The same is true with using fresh veggies. Tomatoes could be more sweet or more acidic. Lemon strength can be quite different. Onions could be mild or pungent. Like others, I had a Greek lemon soup recipe that ended up so lemony that even I couldn't eat it. And I love lemon. Now I've learned that it's better to add less and taste more along the way.
dbcurrie at 2:48PM on 08/29/08
I can only remember one time the recipe was downright wrong and didn't just plain suck. Woman's Day published a recipe for cornbread topped pie and they omitted the leavening agent. When I contacted them about it, they had the audacity to defend the mistake.
I know, what did I expect? It was Woman's Day.
therealchiffonade at 2:52PM on 08/29/08
Haha, I've definitely had my share of disasters. I have a bad habit of not reading recipes all the way through before I start to make them. Or I completely read the ingredients wrong like you said. Exhibit A: cottage cheese pancakes. They were grooooss.
Hillary
Chew on That
Chew on That at 3:25PM on 08/29/08
Women's Day and Ladies Home Journal are criminal. They post on the cover these lovely professionally orchestrated baked goods and then give crap recipes. I have a dozen good friends who read this junk. They see lovely and parade before me blasphemy baking. It is almost false advertising.
It reminds be of the daring bakers blog Dorie Greenspan Party Cake (a Nick Malgieri recipe I had made over 2 dozen times) this one cake caused so much trouble because people did not use the cake flour.
If you google Dorie Greenspan Perfect Party cake you will see the way too many or so "I cannot believe they actually took a pic of that and posted it" cakes. In it the bloggers many versions/revisions somehow those without the book removed the word cake from the flour ingredient and added pastry or all purpose and the cake did not turn out correct. This whisper down the lane recipe just kept getting weirder every time I read more versions of it. The adaptions were just wild to me. I cannot complain here since I am queen of adaptions.
I have made that cake over 20 times and it is by and large the most "PERECT" cake you will ever make. The recipe did not let anyone down the typos and omissions and additions did.
JerzeeTomato at 3:36PM on 08/29/08
My pet peeve is when items on the ingredient list never make it into the directions and vice versa. I was making a recipe from one of Paula Deen's first cookbooks that had a long list of ingredients, most of which I didn't have on hand. I hit the grocery store, got everything I needed and proceeded to cook. I was in the middle of the recipe when the directions started calling for the addition of 3 items, none of which were on the ingredient list. I learned my lesson and now read through both the ingredients and directions and compare the two. I found several recipes in just that one cookbook where this error had been repeated. What happened to the book editors?
@ Cassaendra and dbcurrie, I think the Greek lemon soup to which you are referring is some version of Avgolemono soup. Different types call for different amounts of lemon juice, anywhere from a tablespoon to a whole lemon's worth. I've goofed on this one before and it tasted like I was drinking from a lemon finger bowl. Uggh!
Josdean at 10:49PM on 08/29/08
I lovingly prepared a tray of lavender muffins a few weeks ago, only to realise only minutes before the timer was due to beep that the eggs were still on the counter, waiting to be used.
My husband still ate them, though.
Sanna at 11:45AM on 08/30/08
You also have to take into account the condition of the person who's giving you the recipe! A girlfriend of mine gave me her recipe for chicken cheese soup, which is one of the most decadent things I've ever eaten. It used Old Savannah seasoning, which I'd never used. (I'm a Tony Chachere's girl!)
I took the recipe (and a new box of Old Savannah seasoning) to Louisiana to make for my parents last winter. Got the soup done, tasted it and OMG! My mouth puckered up like a cartoon character's, it was so salty! I checked the recipe, thought about it some, and realized I should have used 3 teaspoons of Old Savannah instead of 3 TABLESPOONS! Can you imagine??
Got to thinking about when she wrote down the recipe for me. We were both three sheets to the wind!
Anyway, I managed to rescue the soup. I added more chicken, more broth, more cheese and lots of potatoes. Not the same soup, but still edible. Next time, I'll have her review the recipe after we sober up!
Editmom at 2:12PM on 09/02/08